


lonely water, won't you let us hold each other

by Waistcoat35



Series: lay me down in sheets of linen, you've had a busy day today [4]
Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Bittersweet, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Slow Dancing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-11
Updated: 2020-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:55:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23098927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Waistcoat35/pseuds/Waistcoat35
Summary: The balcony at Downton becomes a regular waltzing spot, for those who need it.
Relationships: Thomas Barrow/Richard Ellis
Series: lay me down in sheets of linen, you've had a busy day today [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1516343
Comments: 12
Kudos: 91





	lonely water, won't you let us hold each other

**Author's Note:**

> I'm proud of this but also tired so if it's completely incomprehensible I'm so sorry

[Servants' Ball - Downton Abbey, 1929]

He'll go back inside in a minute, he tells himself. Just a few more drags of his cigarette - and he'll have to take care not to get ash on this suit, because if Mrs Hughes knows she'll have his hide for going back on his claim that he's quit - and then, he swears, he'll go back inside. Hell, it won't be too bad, even. He'll loiter at the edge of the room, possibly with Baxter (Mrs Molesley, now, but he can't call her that anymore than he can accept it if she spontaneously changes her first name to Winifred) if Molesley's had too many drinks to dance any more. It won't take many for that to happen, after all. He'll go back inside and sip his drink and make small talk with whichever dancefloor reject and he definitely _will not_ sulk because Richard Ellis is here and has yet to dance with Anna and Daisy and probably a small queue of maids, as he's expected to. He also has yet to get the chance to speak more than a few words to Thomas. But he is resolutely not sulking, because that's something he tries not to do so much now, and he can't have a physical embodiment of a ray of sunshine putting up with his semi-permanent dark clouds.

He really ought to try not to get ash on the suit though - for more reasons than the scolding from Mrs Hughes. He's gotten it special for this - partly because he had known a certain someone would be attending, yes, but also because he's always worn the same old grey suit for the ball, and now that he's butler his salary is just that bit better that he can finally change things up a bit. The waistcoat is a deep sky blue, and if someone looks closely enough - which he hopes Richard has, though he won't admit it - they'll see the faintest outlines of crescent moons on it. He reaches down for the watch fob, thumbs over the familiar curving shape on it, his greatest comfort. He'd have said, some years ago, that it was silly to gain such reassurance from an object. Even the small pocketbook O'Brien had sent him in the trenches or the photograph of his mother on his desk sometimes only remind him of what is absent rather than what is there, and from there plunge him into more misery. He is a miserable, miserable man, and here he is smoking on the bloody balcony like it's five years ago and he hasn't got a friend in the world- 

The smooth metal glides against the grooves of his thumbprint, and somehow it feels like Richard is standing right next to him. And then, suddenly, he is. 

"Thought I'd step out for some air," he says, and it's true and it isn't, as they both well know. A year or two ago - or maybe even some months ago - he'd have bristled against the words, so sure that it was just a half-hearted attempt on Richard's part to conceal pity. But Thomas had caught him staring, earlier, more than once, over the head of whoever he was dancing with, and he had stared when he'd first arrived and Thomas had stepped out of the pantry in all his new finery, and it had been one of those looks that sometimes makes him wonder if Richard really _does_ think he's all that. Like he's looking up at Thomas, even if they're at the same level - even if Thomas is _shorter_ , which he is unless he's wearing certain shoes. He can't describe it any other way. But it makes him think that Richard finds him important for some reason, though God knows why. And that look is the reason that the words don't rankle him as they would have in another time, another place that was anywhere and any _when_ from now, one of those moments that feels like it will never end and never quite began, because when you're leaning against a balcony wall smoking and flicking ash over the edge of it like snowflakes and the person leaning the same way and looking at you from the corner of your vision is someone you want to cry your eyes out for loving even though you can't show it, you can't possibly remember what was happening beforehand, or how the hell you'd gotten so far in life without giving up having not had that moment happen yet. He can't possibly imagine the future after this moment has ended, either. 

He blows out a long stream of smoke, and it floats down, down, down, seems to drape itself over the chilly air like wisteria over a doorway. "Might as well, now that I'm nearly done. Have the space to yourself." There isn't a reality out there in which he had been planning to go and leave Richard there, though there are a few where he briefly forgets how he's forsaken this eye-for-eye and tit-for-tat and entertains it before hating himself for it. It's a test, and they both know it. 

"That'd be an awful shame, wouldn't it, seeing as I only came out here to finally get a moment alone with you. Bloody freezing, otherwise." The honesty of it shakes something loose in Thomas that he hadn't been expecting, because he'd assumed that this exchange would be more hiding under hidden meanings, like dolphins ducking under the surf or ships carving a wide arc around each other in the arctic sea even though they each know where the other one is and that they won't hit one another. With this in mind, he tries for a little honesty himself. 

"Missed you." 

A raised eyebrow, probing rather than judgemental. "It's only been fifteen minutes, give or take." 

"Before that, even."

"Oh?" 

Thomas sighs, takes another drag of his cigarette. "It's a stupid thing to say, alright. But - if you _insist_ -" 

"You don't have to say it."

"But I do, don't I. That's the point. So. Pretend you don't know what I mean." Richard nods.

"There's a thing, isn't there. Where you can miss someone even if they're in the same room as you. We've all _had_ it, I reckon. But not many people really understand it." Another nod. "Christ, I hope I'm not the only one who's had it, now that I've gone and _said_ it." Richard shakes his head.

"You're not. Trust me, you're not. One of my least favourite things is dancing and still feeling like there's nobody there." Thomas looks at him, half-quizzically. "It comes from wanting something you can't _have_ , Thomas. You of all people should know that." 

"Should I?" 

"Considering you've been out here smoking cigarettes for the last several dances, I'd say so. Silly boy," he adds as he reaches an arm around and tucks Thomas into his side for a moment, as if knowing that he was about to apologise for feeling things neither of them understands for someone who surely deserves far better than this. "You're allowed to want me, you know, and have me, too. When it's safe." He tilts his head until it almost rests under Richard's chin, and as much as the angle isn't ideal the warm connecting point of skin on skin seems to flood down his spine until he can breathe, a slump of the shoulders that makes everything ache. 

"Is it? Safe, out here?" He sounds far more despondent that he had necessarily meant to. 

"I'll make it safe." _You have_ , Thomas thinks. _You have, just by bloody being here_. He can hold a gift and it can feel like Richard is right there beside him. He could be in a room full of dangers and, if Richard was there, feel as though he were as safe as houses. He's terribly strange that way, is Mr Ellis.

The drapes inside are drawn - even to come out here one has to part them, duck through and close them again before shutting the door. If dusk is between day and night, this is between day and dusk. The sky is lilac, and there's an amber sheen to the flagstones falling in perfect squares from the shaded windows, squares that stop just before their feet. It feels as though nothing will align again to make a night like this one, though he doesn't know why. That means he'll make the best of it, though. He's about to tap the cigarette out when Richard reaches out his hand for it and, puzzled, Thomas hands it over.

"You don't even like them _new._ "

"Well, I like them alright second hand. As long as they're from you." He perches it at the corner of his mouth and gives a chuff of breath that, Thomas knows, shows he is trying his best not to cough. It's lovely and ridiculous and he has to press his temple against Richard's chest, laughter lines crinkling around his eyes as he snickers. (He's got more of them, now, and he finds he likes them far more than his younger staff photographs, skin smooth and unblemished and expression blank or, sometimes, scowling. They're probably scowl lines and smile lines, mixed together, but the smile lines have won.) 

"Daft, you are." 

"You know it."

"I know _you._ "

"You do."

The cigarette has almost sputtered out now, he's sure, and he waits for Richard to give up on it. He doesn't. "You know," he says conversationally, "you don't have to pretend you like those things when you can't stand them." His right arm has drifted up to hook his hand around Richard's left side, curled at the bottom of his ribs. Richard lifts his left arm, places the hand over Thomas'. 

"You know," he replies, "You don't have to pretend that everything's perfectly fine when it's not. Fake indifference when really you're just missing me." He shrugs.

"s'different."

"Is it."

"Mine sounds stupid to say, is all." Richard sighs.

"Nothing you say is stupid to me."

"I've said plenty of stupid things. You _have_ known me these last two years."

"I didn't say you don't _say_ stupid things. Just that I don't find them stupid." 

"Well, well. Isn't that something." 

"If you want it to be." 

"I do," and Thomas looks honest, now, looking up at him, up _to_ him, like he's the moon and Thomas the lonely astronomer. "I really really do." 

Richard smiles. And then takes the final drag of the cigarette, and chokes on it.

"For God's _sake_ ," Thomas says, and he seldom says that without being or sounding irritated, but Richard Ellis is an exceedingly difficult man to be irritated by, "put that thing _down_." 

Richard repents, at last, and puts it down before turning back to Thomas and placing his hands on Thomas' hips. Careful not to smear grey on his jacket. He looks him level in the eye with a considering expression before speaking. "Thought I'd give the cigarettes a try. They're a little piece of you, aren't they, and I don't have nearly enough of those, do I, even after all this time." 

Thomas sighs. "It shouldn't _be_ like that for me though, should it. I've got the biggest piece of you you could've given me right here when I need it." He pats the watch fob. "I'm not just....pretending everything's fine for its own sake. It should be fine." He sounds like he isn't sure quite who he's convincing. "It should." 

Richard shakes his head slowly. "It doesn't have to be. I'm almost glad that that little thing can't fill the gap I leave when I'm not here, except I can't be because I wish there didn't have to be a gap at all. It's alright when that isn't enough for you, Thomas. I doubt there's a thing you could give me that could do the same for me, either, save for your love. For your company." The music has started up again, a waltz, and they slide into it without quite thinking about it, back and forth across the balcony as Richard leads and Thomas follows. 

He looks up at Richard again, and Richard looks up at him. "And I give both gladly. I just don't always know if I mention the _gladly_ part often enough." Richard smiles, softer now and in a way that makes something glimmer in his eyes. 

"I think it was more than implied, Mr Barrow." 

They move sideways during the dance until the light from inside can pour onto them, and neither cares as much as they should. It dances over their hairlines and jackets, and Richard looks down at Thomas' waistcoat. 

"I like the moons." 

"I wondered if you'd see."

"I'm always seeing, when it comes to you."

"I quite hoped that'd be the case." 

"I missed you too, by the way."

"I know." 

They both realise, at the same time, that the waistcoat may be another way in which Thomas is collecting Richard's pieces.


End file.
